Man, 35, casts his first vote for Hege

Wednesday

Jan 6, 1999 at 12:01 AM

WILLIAM KEESLER The Dispatch

David Owens, 35, said he had never voted before.But immediately after getting off work at Lexington Furniture Industries on Tuesday afternoon, he went straight to the Lexington Ward 4 polling place and cast his first ballot.For a single candidate: Davidson County Sheriff Gerald Hege.The precinct official who showed Owens how to work the voting machine at First Lutheran Church asked if he wanted to punch buttons for the other seven items on the two-page Republican ballot, but Owens said no."That's it," he said.That one candidate could motivate a person to cast his first ballot, 17 years after reaching voting age, might speak volumes about the appeal of Hege, who overwhelmingly won renomination in Tuesday's primary and swept candidates in two other local races along with him.One of the biggest question marks throughout the spring campaign was the extent of the tough-talking Hege's popularity at the grassroots level. County commissioners Chairman Fred Sink said Tuesday night that there had been small numbers of voters who were clearly pro-Hege or anti-Hege."There were a whole lot of people in the middle not saying anything," Sink said. "But they spoke today."One of them was Owens. Before Owens moved to Lexington from his native Winston-Salem five years ago, an employer once tried to talk him into voting in a presidential election. But Owens refused, reasoning that his vote would go to a member of the electoral college instead of directly to a candidate.So why break a longtime habit of civic inaction for the sheriff of Davidson County?."He's turned this place around," said Owens, contending that Hege's tactics have reduced crime and saying he feels much safer in Davidson County than he ever did in Forsyth. Owens is married and has three children, aged 13, 10 and 7. He said he also likes Hege's "hands-on" approach to law enforcement.Owens, wearing a Dale Earnhardt cap and a gold necklace with a medallion of Earnhardt's No. 3 Chevrolet and sporting several tattoos, said if Hege's pink jail and inmate work crews had been around 15 years ago, Owens wouldn't have been as rough as he was as a youth.He said he stopped by Hege's campaign office in Midway a couple of months ago to get a Hege campaign sign but in the process also picked up a voter registration form that he filled out and returned. After someone stole the sign from in front of Owens' house on Sixth Street, he went and got another one and put it up."If I could do it, I'd get back in line and vote again," Owens said. "I'd do it all night. I'd vote for the same person.""I'm going to vote in November, too," Owens added. "I'm going to vote for him."